Loyd Case: Pro Photographer

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I’m not a professional photographer, but I play one on the Internet.

In a sense, I do get paid for taking pictures—but those photos are just in support of the articles and reviews I write. So I suppose it’s not a stretch to say I’m a pro. However, I’m not nearly in the same league as PC Magazine’s Scott Schedivy, who takes all those great product photos that go into the print version of PC Magazine.

Many years ago—more than I care to admit—I was deeply into photography; enough so that I was actually considering going pro as a photojournalist. I was involved in clubs, and managed the darkroom at my local community college.

Times changed, I ended up as a physical science major and went on to graduate school. I eventually lost my Pentax SLR, leaving it in a cab in New York City. In the intervening years, I owned mostly point-and-shoot cameras, although later I bought a Nikon N70 consumer grade SLR. It mostly went unused, though.

When the digital camera era arrived, I ignored it early on. From a technology point of view, I was somewhat interested, but the early camera resolutions and prices weren’t attractive. Eventually, though, I jumped in, picking up a Minolta DiMage 7Hi. The 7Hi was a sort of ersatz SLR. That’s to say, it was really a point-and-shoot camera that looked a little like an SLR, and had controls that were more flexible than the average point and shoot.

Eventually, though, the old school photographer lurking inside me started pining for a digital SLR. It took several years, and in that time, I went through a couple more point-and-shoot cameras. Eventually, though, I ended up with a Nikon D70S. I had a great time using the D70S, but at the time it seemed to be not quite as robust as some of the film SLRs I’d used in the past.

Eventually, Nikon came out with the D80, and I jumped on that, handing over the D70S to my older daughter, who had just started taking photography classes. The D80 was substantially better than the D70S. On the surface, the improvements were minor, but the overall package proved to be quite a bit better to my old-school hands than the D70S ever was.

(Note to fans of Canon, Sony Alphas, Olympus and others: those companies make great cameras. I’ve got nothing against them. What I do have is a number of Nikon-mount lenses, which makes it just a bit more difficult to move to another brand.)

I’ve used the D80 extensively, both for shooting product pictures, and for family stuff. I even used it for the volleyball documentary project. However, this last project highlighted some key shortcomings. The D80 “only” shoots at 3 frames per second in continuous mode—I would have liked just a little faster. But the major issue was the amount of noise at ISO1600 and above.

Along the way, I learned more about lighting than I had in the previous two decades. I went through several light kits, and now use a combination of plain white paper backgrounds or a light tent for shooting product photos.

Using Imagenomic’s Noiseware helped alleviate noise problems substantially, but it was still frustrating to have so much noise in ISO1600 and above.

When I first started shooting sports photos, I used the same Tamron 28-75 f2.8 lens I use for product shots. Eventually, though, I acquired a Sigma 50-150 f2.8 EX DC HSM zoom. This turned out to be a sweet lens, weighing in at well under two pounds. The motor is fast, and I caught a lot of great action shots when shooting near the court.

But in a number of games, I was forced to sit up high in the bleachers, which was just a little beyond the reach of the 50-150. So I reluctantly sold the lens (alas, I’m not made of money) and invested in a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 HSM. Using this lens required some learning, and yet another purchase: a monopod with a ball mount. Shooting sports photos often meant fast panning, and the new lens was heavy enough so that I’d either overshoot the pan, or I’d get a blurry picture. This isn’t something a VR (vibration reduction) lens would help, though, since the shutter speeds were still fairly high: 1/160th and higher.

But that high noise and low fps problem bugged me, probably more than it should have.

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